European Leaders Seek Tighter Cooperation on Energy

BRUSSELS — The European Union authorities vowed on Wednesday to accelerate efforts to knit together their diverse energy systems amid deepening tensions with Russia, a major supplier of the bloc’s natural gas.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive agency, said its proposal for an energy union represented an important step toward unifying member countries’ economies and could help wean some countries from dependence on Russia, which supplies about a quarter of the bloc’s natural gas.

About half of those Russian gas supplies are piped through Ukraine, where Russia is involved in heavy fighting in the east of the country. Disputes between Russia and Ukraine led to cutoffs of Russian gas to Europe in 2006 and 2009. Tensions have flared in recent days after the Russian gas exporter Gazprom threatened to halt deliveries because of a payment dispute.

But the ambitious plans — including some initiatives that have failed to win Europewide approval before — face difficult odds because the 28 European Union countries zealously guard their sovereignty over national energy systems.

The announcement “almost seems to be a way of saying that we have got to do the things that we have already said we would do that we haven’t done yet, but we have to do them quicker and better,” said Jonathan Stern, the chairman of the gas research program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain.

The proposals seek to balance the need to fight climate change and reduce emissions with an effort to lower prices, secure supplies and make it easier to trade energy inside the bloc. The European Commission also recommended that work should be intensified on a gas pipeline from Central Asia to diversify supplies away from Russia.

The announcement was given a cautious welcome in London. Edward Davey, the British government secretary for energy and climate change, suggested that success would rely on promoting a mix of low-carbon technologies including nuclear power, renewable sources like wind power, and greater energy efficiency.

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Proponents of renewable energy said the commission would need to pass new legislation enforcing strict greenhouse gas reduction targets to promote the industry.

The “disorderly patchwork on energy policies” across Europe “is currently sending a confusing message to those in financial circles and would-be investors,” said Thomas Becker, the chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, an industry group in Brussels.

Some lawmakers warned that plans to give Brussels a greater role in negotiating energy contracts with suppliers like Russia did not go far enough.

Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, a free-market group in the European Parliament, said the goal should be to “hit Putin where it hurts most.” The commission “should lead negotiations on energy agreements with third countries, not just participate,” he said.

Cooperation in the coal and steel sectors was the basis more than half a century ago for what has now grown into the European Union. But past efforts to draft a unified energy policy have highlighted deep divisions between countries like France, which relies on nuclear technology for its power, and Germany, which is phasing out its reactors.

The energy systems of many Central and East European countries remain dependent on Russia, and while the authorities in countries like Poland favor hydraulic fracturing technology to tap natural gas domestically, countries like France have banned such techniques on environmental grounds.

Even so, Maros Sefcovic, a commission vice president, called the initiative “undoubtedly the most ambitious energy project” in more than a half century and said the policies could mean as much as 40 billion euros, or $45 billion, in savings for business and consumers annually.

Mr. Sefcovic also promised a decision “within weeks” on a long-running antitrust case against Gazprom. But he said a final decision about whether to charge the company with abusing monopoly power in countries like Lithuania that were formerly part of the Soviet Union must be made by Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s antitrust chief.

James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Stanley Reed from London.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: European Leaders Seek Tighter Cooperation on Energy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe